Saguaro Riptide

admitting that the miniature Pacific and the sandy beach with the palm trees was never going to happen.

She should have never left Dale alone on a day like that. A day didn’t go by without her wishing she hadn’t done it.

But she had done it. She’d gone to buy hamburger and milk and bread and mustard, and her husband had killed himself because she wasn’t there to put her arms around him when he took that warped 45 off the turntable.

The junkyard had only been open a week. A single car sat in the huge lot surrounded by gleaming chain-link fence-a battered lemon-colored VW Bug.

That was where Sandy found Dale late that afternoon- leaning against that battered lemon Bug, the hole in his head the same color as the blistering lava sunset.

Still gripping a pistol in his right hand, the warped 45 in his left.

Sandy sipped her beer. She knew that the VW Bug had been crushed many years ago, but she was always afraid she was going to see it when she looked through the sliding glass door.

But the VW wasn’t there this evening. Sandy wished for the millionth time that she had only dreamed it, the same way she’d once dreamed of watching soft waves brush a golden beach in the Arizona desert.

Sandy opened the door. A gust of wind ruffled her dark hair. In the junkyard, twisted Detroit steel floated in pools of twilight. Broken windshields gleamed, as if charged with the last whisper of sunshine. A slight wind rose, bringing with it a golden haze, and the golden haze whistled through tailpipes fluted with rust, dying in dead engines heavy with oil that could smother any sound.

And then shadows were everywhere. They came on the wind, from the cinnamon mountains. And the wind was rising, howling-

Sandy laughed, because the wind wasn’t howling at all.

“Goddamn dog,” she said, and she snatched a can of Alpo from the kitchen and shoved the can opener in her back pocket and stepped through the doorway that afforded a view of the junkyard and the mountains beyond.

Dale yipped in delight, stubby legs pumping like mad as he charged along the chain-link fence.

Sandy smiled.

“Hold on, boy,” she said. “I’m comin’.”

Woody stepped onto the landing. The Range Rover hadn’t returned, and now the Dodge Dakota was gone, too, meaning that the bitch in the black bikini had also hit the trail.

Shit. Wasn’t nobody around but him and that damn dog barking in the junkyard.

Mutt was driving him seriously crazy, too.

He wished he had the monk’s pistol.

But he didn’t. Didn’t have a gun. Didn’t have a car. Didn’t have a motherfuckin’ dime in his pocket.

Shit.

The dog shut up. Only one reason why-the motel lady was over by the chain-link fence, feeding the mutt some dinner.

She was wearing a pair of cutoff jeans that rode up her ass like a second skin as she knelt to dish up that dog food.

Had nice legs for an older bitch, too.

She turned and headed for the house. Not bad tits on her, either.

Woody wished she’d dish something up for him.

She looked up just then and saw him.

She waved, gave him a smile.

Just the way she’d smiled when she spotted those goddamn roses.

Smile and wave at the faggot, that was what she was thinking.

Woody smiled, waved back.

This was some sorry shit, and he was seriously tired of it. He went inside and grabbed the sharpened toothbrush. He’d teach this bitch to smile at him.

He’d teach her a thing or two. .

THREE

Ellis hit the brakes a second too late. The scar-colored Caddy fishtailed, balding steel-belted radials spitting up rocks on the shoulder of the road as the car powered past the turnoff to Ellis’s mobile home.

That was what he got for daydreaming about Komoko’s money. Miss the damn turn.

Not that he was going to back up. To hell with that. He swung the wheel hard to the left and kept on going, tires kicking up sand now, front bumper gobbling cholla and prickly pear and any other damn thing in his way. He’d make his own damn road-that’s exactly what he’d do. And to hell with anything or anybody who got in his way.

If he’d seen a tourist pissing behind one of the sixty-two saguaros that dotted his property, he would have run him down without a second thought. That’s how shook up he was. Be you man or beast, woman or goddamn miserable desert vegetation. . you’d better leave ol’ Ellis Aaron Perkins a wide berth this evening.

Because Ellis hadn’t found one thin dime of that missing money. Not in the ruins of Graceland, not out in the desert. Must have been he’d covered three or four square miles searching for a spot where Komoko might have buried something, but he hadn’t seen a single sign-it was like the whole goddamned place hadn’t been disturbed since the days when dinosaurs had walked the goddamned earth.

But it had to be that the money was out there somewhere.

It had to be.

Maybe it was just that Komoko had hidden it damn good. Some place you wouldn’t notice right off.

Ellis pressed the gas pedal to the floor.

Maybe he’d never find Komoko’s money.

Maybe no one would.

Man, that was a hell of a note.

Ellis pulled to a stop in front of the trailer. He knew that it would be hotter than Ann-Margret inside but didn’t really care, because that’s where the beer was.

He climbed out of the car. His goddamn leather coat was a mess. All covered with white dust. He looked like a goddamn ghost. And sweaty-man, there wasn’t even a rumor of the Old Spice he’d used to wax down his pits that morning.

Manly odor wasn’t his only concern, though. He hoped his pit-juice hadn’t short-circuited the batteries for his vibrator throat-buzzer. That would be a damn shame with him having to go on the road tonight and all. He didn’t have time to play Mr. Fixit.

Didn’t have time to get the coat cleaned, either. And he wanted to wear it, because all his jumpsuits were at the cleaners. Hell … he didn’t have time for any of this shit. He’d just beat off the dust, run a quick check on the throat-buzzer, dump some Hai Karate on the coat, and hope for the best.

Now that he was going. No avoiding that. He had to go on the flea market trip, because he was about busted. Of course, if he’d found Komoko’s goddamn money, he wouldn’t have to go anywhere at all.

Heat waves shimmied on top of the trailer like the ghosts of frenzied go-go girls. The place sure wasn’t any Graceland. Just a leaning hunk of tin in the middle of nowhere. Tinfoil on the windows just the same way the King had done it, both because he was nocturnal and also needed his privacy. But Ellis Aaron Perkins was up in the middle of the day and nobody was begging for his autograph, and on this cracker box tin-foiled windows just looked like that much more tin because Ellis hardly had a goddamn dime to his name.

Ellis studied on it until he couldn’t stand it anymore. Then he reached into the backseat of the scarred Caddy and grabbed the shovel that had been so goddamn useless and threw it as far as he could.

“Goddamn,” he said, and with all that plumbing missing out of his throat the word couldn’t even be called a whisper.